Introduction As ultra cyclists, we are all faced with the question of how much training is enough to perform well at the distances we choose to ride. We need to make sure that we have trained enough so that our bodies are comfortable riding at desired speeds for particular distances.
Contador planning final season of Tour de France success. Better to burn out than to fade away.

There is some common ground between Kurt Cobain's parting maxim and Alberto Contador's career outlook. "I have always wanted to retire at the highest level – that's the way I want people to remember me," the Spaniard tells Cyclingnews as we sit down in a hotel nestled in the Italian Alps. With the 2016 season likely to be Contador's last, next year's Tour de France is being lined up as the final firework and, though the 2015 season is not yet over, he already seems immersed in his project. "The primary objective is the Tour de France.
LONG AND EASY- Rethinking Our Approach to Endurance - Strong Swift Durable. LONG AND EASY Rethinking Our Approach to Endurance Cycles by Jordan Smothermon We start our endurance cycle this week and it’s built around a couple of central ideas. 1.

What Can You Do in Three Weeks? ~ Hunter Allen Power Blog. All the grand tours are three weeks long.

The typical build cycle in training is three weeks long. The life cycle of the cabbage worm is three weeks long.
3 Steps to Preparing for Back-To-Back Events (or, Why the Giro-Tour Double is so hard!) - CTS. One of the best things about having a staff of full-time coaches is the impromptu coaching round-table discussions we tend to have.

This week we had an interesting discussion about the Giro d’Italia – Tour de France Double, or more broadly the attempt to win two back-to-back Grand Tours in a single season (Giro-Tour or Tour-Vuelta). The wider implications of this conversation for amateur athletes is the discussion of how much recovery and training is necessary to perform well in two big goal events. How far apart should the events be, and how should an athlete recover/train between the two?
Altitude Experience: Successful Trekking and Climbing Above 8,000 Feet - Mike Farris - Google-kirjat. Himalayan porter's specialization: metabolic power, economy, efficiency and skill. Abstract Carrying heavy loads in the Himalayan region is a real challenge.

Porters face extreme ranges in terrain condition, path steepness, altitude hypoxia and climate for 6–8 h a day, many months a year, since they were boys. It has been previously shown that, when carrying loads on level terrain, porters' metabolic economy is higher than in Caucasians but the reasons are still unknown.
J%20Appl%20Physiol-2002-Minetti-1039-46.pdf. Govss.pdf. Kerrison on Watts, weights and suffering. Tim Kerrison is the Australian coach brought into Team Sky to re-think the team’s training and work with ‘the GC group’ from 2010 onwards.

Previously, Kerrison had been working as a coach with the British swimming team under Bill Sweetenham and only officially started work with Team Sky at the end of 2009. After a disappointing 2010 and a crash-blighted 2011 Tour, 2012 saw his riders finish one-two on the final podium of the Tour de France.
Chain gang. Sir Dave Brailsford, team principal Sir Dave Brailsford regularly likens his role to that of an ‘orchestra conductor’ and, after two days at the Tenerife training camp, the analogy makes perfect sense. The team is big and, with every rider and member of staff following different programmes, there are little hubs of Team Sky literally spread all over the world at any one time. Brailsford oversees a conference call every Monday with senior staff where the past week is discussed. ‘I go to where I think I need to be, where there are issues, where I can add value,’ he says.

‘I leave it until very late and make a judgment. I spent a month in Italy for the Giro, a day at home, then to Barcelona, a meeting in London, then on the Dauphine [in France] and on and on it goes.
Chain gang. Bradley Wiggins reveals Team Sky's explosive secret that has put him in contention for Tour de France. “People will think what they will think but I’m not the slightest bit bothered. I don’t read the cycling press and I don’t Twitter anymore and let people know my business. I’m a cycling recluse really and love it.”
What Can You Do in Three Weeks? ~ Hunter Allen Power Blog. All the grand tours are three weeks long. The typical build cycle in training is three weeks long. The life cycle of the cabbage worm is three weeks long. Most women recognize they are pregnant at three weeks. Three weeks, twenty-one days.

How much can you improve your fitness in three weeks?
Eight weeks of simulated altitude training – an introduction. You only have to look as far as Team Sky's Tenerife training camps to see that altitude training is taken seriously at the pointy end of the sport. Now, in collaboration with the Melbourne-based Bodyology altitude training facility we've been able to tee up an eight-week simulated altitude training block for local A-grade cyclist Stephen Lane.

Stephen is nearing completion of a PhD in training adaptation at RMIT University so in addition to sharing his subjective experience of the altitude training, Stephen can bring his sports science expertise to bear.
Training time. Want to see Alberto Contador, Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali in action together? You could wait for the Critérium du Dauphiné in June but, as today’s L’Equipe shows, they will all meet up this month in Tenerife for training camps on Mount Teide. Quite probably they will all stay in the same hotel, setting up an intriguing atmosphere with the three great rivals for the Tour de France sitting down for dinner together, albeit at different tables. It’s easy to spend hours reviewing the tactics in a race but very little time and coverage is given to what a rider’s job really involves: training. Training > racing So far this year Caja Rural’s Luis Leon Sanchez is the rider with the most days of racing: 43 days.

It still means for every day he’s raced he’s had two off and remember he’s the exception with the most days.
Team Sky questions and answers. IrfanView HTML-Thumbnails. 1550-2783-11-36. Polarised Training Intensities – Is Goldilocks Training Dead?
Goldilocks first tried Baby Bears training programme, but it was far too easy and Goldilocks was easily bored.
Are 8-Minute Intervals Uniquely Effective?
Are 8-Minute Intervals Uniquely Effective?
Training periodization. Deep-root cultural heritage and innovative paradigms (2013) - Managing the distribution of training intensity: the polarized model. Revisiting Polarized Training. Revisiting Polarized Training.

Polarized training has greater impact on key endurance variables than threshold, high intensity, or high volume training. Cycling Power Lab. A cyclist expends power to overcome a number of forces including gravity, air resistance or aerodynamic drag, acceleration, rolling resistance, wheel bearing and drivetrain friction. Fortunately it has long been possible to reflect all of these forces in a mathematical model of cycling power such that we can understand with high precision the power a rider would need to produce to achieve a certain speed or event time or conversely the speed or time that could be expected for a given power output.

We incorporate such a model into the following calculators which can be applied to practical analysis of racing. Power Components Calculator Use this model to calculate the power output required to achieve a certain time on a simple one-sector course or to understand how required power output is spent in terms of components required to overcome the different forces of resistance.
James Hewitt Cycling Science – 7 Ways To Use Critical Power For Road Cycling Training. 3. Physiological adaptations - the biology lesson!
Training Toolbox – July 2013 – Stage Race and Multi-Day Event Preparation. ComebackTrainingPlan.pdf. Astana coach reveals training methods for Nibali and Aru ahead of Classics and Giro d'Italia. Practicalprogramming. Practicalprogramming. Vladimir-Issurin-Block-Periodisation.pdf.

Still Time to get in on Stryd a Power Meter for Running! - Page 7. Endurancetrainingplan.pdf. KSI Products. The Carbohydrate Loading Conundrum. Written by: Kevin Cann Carbohydrate loading is a dietary means that has been used to improve performance in endurance athletes. The theory behind carbohydrate loading is to maximize the stored amount of carbohydrates in our body, as glycogen, to yield more energy.
Training for a Stage Race - BikeRaceInfo. Back to list of training, fitness and health articles There are not many stage races here in the US, and the ones we have are usually only three to four days long. A longer stage race requires more fitness, more stamina and the ability to recover day after day. Most weekend races create just enough fatigue to feel sore and tired on Monday, but not enough to give you the sense of what a five day stage race might feel like. We all train smart. We all train hard.

The first thing you need to do after deciding that you are going to race in a longer stage race is to begin developing multi-day ‘recoverability’, so that you’ll be able to produce similar wattages day after day all the way to the final stage. Skip Spangenburg was an incredible stage racer, but did not see as much success as his abilities justified while racing in the US, because the races just were not hard or long enough.

What type of training should you do and how far should you push yourself? Day 2: Vo2 Max 2.0hours.
Block Training - anyone tried it?
Wiggins heads to Majorca for training block. Peak Performance and The Selfish Brain: The Central Governor and Its Role in 100-Mile Performance. Fundamentals of Strength Training and Recovery. Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast, & High - Mark Twight, James Martin - Google-kirjat. Allen Lim: Training with Power. Bradley Wiggins reveals Team Sky's explosive secret that has put him in contention for Tour de France. Train the Albert Einstein way - Cycling Weekly. Is reverse periodization the new way forward?